Spectacular Spider-Man Coloring Book (China)

Background

This unlicensed coloring book is uncredited, but features art which is similar to a number of earlier Chinese books.

Story Details

Physically, the book is 11" x 8.2" soft card stapled cover. It features 8 pages of coloring pages. These pages are flimsy gray paper, and the artwork is horrible and incomplete. It looks very much as if an untalented labourer has begrudgingly traced the outlines and webbing from a handful of generally available Spider-Man images. Yep, that's almost certainly what happened.

There is no background art in these images. Instead, random little icons are scattered in the background, lightning, suns, stars, springs of holly, and other silly little pictograms.

At the heart of this book is a centerfold featuring Spider-Man stickers, in the shape of hearts, stars, and such-like. The graphics for the stickers are from a hodge-podge of sources. Promo art from Spider-Man 2 and Spider-Man 3 films appear, along with a mix of unidentifiable coloured art of dubious heritage.

General Comments

The final result is truly tragic. Sure, these books sell for only $2 at my local "Cheap Crap from China" store. But there are quite a few examples of licensed material of incomparably better size and quality that you can buy for only a couple of bucks more.

Overall Rating

I guess times are tough, and sometimes "utter shite" is all you can afford. If that's the case, then this book is just what you need.

Rock-Bottom half-a-web.